BELAIR, Sint Maarten – Learning Unlimited hosted its 2nd annual Upcycling Fair for its middle school classes (6th , 7th and 8th ) on Tuesday, October 30. Initiated by the schools Head of Science and Middle School Coordinator Mrs. Preeti Notani in 2018, the fair featured 23 projects for the 2019 school year. First, second and third place winners were selected for each of the classes.
Upcycling involves reusing an item in such a way that its value is increased. Upcycling, also known as creative re-use, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, and useless or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or even for better environmental value.
According to Notani, the Upcycling Fair is planned to encourage students and the community to find ways to reduce the amount of garbage thrown into landfills. The main goal of this project is to inspire students to “use what you’ve got,” which is really what society needs to do more of in general, as well as to move away from the constant buying of new things. “We need to make full use of resources we already have, rather than using them once and discarding them,” she said.
Upcycling is not the same as recycling. Recycling takes consumer materials — mostly plastic, paper, metal and glass — and breaks them down so their base materials can be remade into a new consumer product, often of lesser quality.
Caption1: Grade 7A second place winners Ghassan Yousef, Param Jessani, Malachi Martis and Aryan Jhangiani with their project of a house and fence out of plastic bottles.
Caption2: Grade 7A first place winners Anne Kingma and Charlie Gumbis with their project “Book Swap” a rotating book shelf / reading table with the top adorned with bottle caps.
